Lilacs by Galway Kinnell

Lilacs

The sweet wind climbed with a laggard pace

Up the green hill, but meeting the sun there

Disappeared like a piece of warm wax

Into the ground. Down on the south slope

A bitch stretched, and swaths of fierce lilacs

Opened astonishing furnaces of scent.

A woman introduced herself into the park,

Her dry legs crackling in darkness,

At bitch, lilac, the fierce and asleep.

The hot festival flooded her garments

With rich scent, and worked memories slenderly

Out of closets in the well-governed flesh.

She stopped. Right and left the unsteady

Blossoms broke into flame, and the wide lawn

Lifted a somersault, slowly, of grief.

Then she turned back to the hot parlor,

Where tea and dry supper were laid, and a spoon

Would arrange the bottom of her china dream.